The other night I stayed up far too late watching a movie called Cinemania, a documentary about several rabid film fans in New York. I found it interesting less because of the movie aspect than because the folks seemed, to me, to be pretty much the same folks you sometimes see as rabid fans of science fiction or comics or model trains or whatever--they didn't have the best social skills, focused their energies on their hobby rather than on work or relationships, and seemed essentially to have the attributes of stereotypical nerds or geeks--the movie-fan version of the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy. (I would assume that a lot of that had to do with editing, of course.)
Anyway, a couple of things occurred to me.
First, that apparently there's a basic similarity among capital-F Fans of all stripes--that the stereotypical comic book fan (and they are out there, although certainly they are a minority) isn't the way s/he is because of anything about comics but because of the degree of obsession. It's the person, not the hobby itself.
And second, why is it that when we hear the word "film buff," we don't think of these guys? We think of someone who maybe likes to see a movie or two a week, but it doesn't interfere with his or her job or social life. We don't automatically envision the extreme end of the fan spectrum. But say the words "comic fan" and automatically it's Comic Book Guy who comes to people's minds.
1 comment:
You raise an interesting point. A conundrum if you will. Perhaps, it is because movies are not viewed as a mainly juvenile pursuit. YOU may know, and I may know that darned too few kids are reading comic books nowadays, with the exception or your kids and mine...but they are still viewed as "kid stuff" to an awful lot of people. Mainly I suppose, because an awful lot of people read them as kids and then gave them up.
Movies don't have that reputation.
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